How UpdatesOn stays free

Families should be able to share an update without thinking about another bill.

That is the starting point for UpdatesOn. When someone you love is in the hospital, recovering, receiving treatment, or approaching the end of their life, keeping everyone informed can become another thing to carry. The service is here to make that part a little easier.

Creating a family page, posting updates, sharing photos, and following along are free. There is no paid family tier and no advertising. You do not need to contribute to use UpdatesOn.

What does it cost to run?

A quiet page still needs some practical things behind it: servers to keep it available, storage for photos and audio, and email delivery so updates reach the people waiting for them. There is also ongoing maintenance and development to keep the service useful and reliable.

Optional contributions help cover those costs. They go to operating UpdatesOn, which is run by Vakil Ventures LLC. They do not go to a patient, family, hospital, or medical fundraiser. We do not provide charitable tax receipts.

How do you make money?

We now offer an optional way to support UpdatesOn, either once or monthly. It is a way for someone who finds the service useful, or simply wants it to exist, to help with its operation.

We are also developing offerings for institutions that want to make UpdatesOn available to the families in their care. That is a separate direction for sustaining the service, rather than asking families to pay for access.

We will keep explaining how the service is funded as that work develops.

Does contributing change anything for my family?

No. Every family has the same access. Contributions do not unlock features, change how a page looks, or affect whose updates get delivered. We do not publish donor rankings or put fundraising requests on family pages or in their update emails.

There is no expectation to give. If you are using UpdatesOn during something difficult, caring for yourself and the people around you comes first.

If you would like to help

The support page offers one-time and monthly contributions in US dollars. You choose the amount. Monthly support continues until you cancel, and you can request a secure management link from that same page whenever you need to change or stop it.

Checkout is handled by Stripe. Card details stay with Stripe, and contributions are kept separate from family updates. We do not need a patient’s name or a link to their page when you contribute.

If you have a question about how any of this works, send us a note. And whether or not you contribute: you are welcome here.